Chapter 4: JESUS

51) If, as A Course in Miracles
suggests, the world totally misunderstood Jesus' message two thousand years
ago, why did he wait so long to correct it?

Again, this thoughtful question is based
upon a linear view of time, in which two thousand years appear to be an
inordinately long period of time for the error to be corrected. Clearly,
the ones asking such a question are projecting onto Jesus their own impatience
and, most likely, their unforgiveness of the various Christian Churches
that have superimposed the ego thought system onto the ego-free teachings
of the true Jesus.

A more profound way of addressing this
question is to consider that being ego-free, anyone in the real world --
as is Jesus -- does not really choose to do anything. Having chosen the
Holy Spirit once and for all, there is nothing more to choose. Therefore,
there is no longer a decision maker in the mind that activates the body
and interacts with the world, as is the ego's very important need. Truly
advanced teachers of God -- Teachers of teachers -- God do not do;
they are. They do not plan, choose, deliberate, or behave as does
a person who believes in the reality of the ego thought system. Their simple
presence of love takes its shape around the needs of those who still identify
with a world of form, much as water takes its shape according to the container
in which it has been put, or the bed of the river shapes the flow of the
water coursing through it.

In this context, therefore, we can understand
that the appearance of Jesus within the world's dream two thousand years
ago was the result of the Son's readiness to experience the Love of God
within his dream. It is as if the mind of the Son -- the only true sphere
of experience there is -- partially opened the door of his mind that had
screened out the presence of the Holy Spirit. The mind, previously darkened
by guilt, thus allowed some light in, and this light took the form of Jesus,
the Son of Light, whose presence within the ego's world of darkness reminds
us all that we too are children of the Light.

The fear that this light engendered
-- for it constitutes a grave threat to the ego's thought system of darkness
-- led to the Son's closing the door to protect his individual self, and
this took the form of seeking to destroy Jesus and then his message, as
the history of Christianity attests. This is why the gospel writers changed
the entire message of Jesus and rooted it in the crucifixion, which reflected
the ego's underlying plan to perpetuate its own thought system of betrayal,
suffering, and death. Jesus comments on this dynamic in the Course in several
places. We look at two such passages; one general to the dynamics of the
Son's mind, and the other specific to Jesus himself.

As the light comes nearer you
will rush to darkness, shrinking from the truth, sometimes retreating to
the lesser forms of fear and sometimes to stark terror (T- 1 8.111.2: 1).

All who believe in separation have a
basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. They believe in attack
and rejection, so that is what they perceive and leach and learn.
These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection.
What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly,
and can therefore teach yourself wrong. Many thought I was attacking them,
even though it was apparent I was not. An insane learner learns strange
lessons. What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought
system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive
this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself
with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe
you are (T-6.V-B.1:1-9).

The reader should also consult "Atonement
without Sacrifice" and "The Message of the Crucifixion," the opening sections
of Chapters 3 and 6 in the text, for even more specific comments by Jesus
about the misunderstanding of his message, and how and why it happened.

And now, two thousand years later, we
see that the door to the Son's closed mind opened again to allow in the
light of truth, and the result is the original message of Jesus, presented
in a contemporary twentieth (soon to be twenty-first) century form. Needless
to say, there have been other expressions of this light in the Christian
(and non-Christian) world, but, again, we shall remain only within the
context of A Course in Miracles.

The advantage of answering the question
in this way is that one is able to avoid the anthropomorphizing of Jesus
-- making him think, plan, and behave the way we would -- which would only
once again foster the belief that we have captured him within the ego's
dream, making him one of us, instead of our becoming like him. Above all,
it is always essential to keep in mind that God has no true response
to the thought of separation, even though, as we have already seen, the
metaphoric language of A Course in Miracles often portrays it so.
First and foremost, if God knew about the "tiny, mad idea," it would have
had to be real. Therefore, the Holy Spirit and Jesus -- as messengers of
God within the dream, and being the Voices of the plan of the Atonement
which states that the dream of separation never happened -- would also
have to share in this non-response to error. It is Their simple light-filled
presence within our minds -- darkened by thoughts of sin, guilt, and fear
-- that help us. They do nothing; it is only our egos that act and
react. And as long as we experience this thought of separation in the specific
forms of specialness that comprise our individual lives, we must experience
this Help in specific forms as well. But these forms are determined by
our ego scripts, not by any specific intervention of the divine.

Reproduced with the kind permission of Gloria and
Kenneth
Wapnick and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles